Evaluating Academic Legal Research in Europe

Gestel, Rob van; Lienhard, Andreas

doi:10.4337/9781788115506

Cited by 8 publications

(12 citation statements)

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“…Consequently, if policy aims at influencing research practice (also if only to increase excellence), the diversity of such evaluation procedures needs to be taken into account. The third group of classifications goes more into detail (Galleron et al, 2017;Van Gestel & Lienhard, 2019b;Giménez-Toledo et al, 2019;Ochsner et al, 2018). This type of classification takes the perspective from the shop floor, i.e., the researchers.…”

Section: Typologies Of National Evaluation Proceduresmentioning

confidence: 99%

National research evaluation systems and the social sciences

Ochsner¹

2022

Handbook on Research Assessment in the Social Sciences

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Many countries have introduced national evaluation exercises. The methods commonly applied have been developed for the natural and life sciences and are criticized for being ill-adapted to the social sciences. After giving an overview of different classifications of countries' evaluation procedures, we present an empirically derived typology of national research evaluation systems that takes into account whether adaptations to disciplinary specificities, such as social sciences knowledge production and dissemination practices, are considered. The analysis shows that national evaluation systems are diverse and complex combinations of research evaluation practices at the national, regional and institutional level, including the influence of the international level on research funding of projects and careers. We conclude that diversity rather than standardisation in evaluation practices is key to reach the aim of evaluation: to provide researchers and university administrators with a tool to improve their organisation and research practice.

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Section: Typologies Of National Evaluation Proceduresmentioning

confidence: 99%

National research evaluation systems and the social sciences

Ochsner¹

2022

Handbook on Research Assessment in the Social Sciences

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“…Nevertheless, there is no agreement among legal theorists on the nature of legal science as a discipline ( Hoecke, 2011 , 17). In such a panorama, different definitions, standards, and practices are used for the assessment ( Castermans and Amtenbrink, 2015 ), as they acknowledge differences in legal science disciplines (civil, administrative, labor, criminal, commercial), research (doctrinal, comparative, empirical), scope (national, regional, or international), choice of language (local or English), and strong links between practice and research ( Conte, 2015 ; Van Gestel and Lienhard, 2019 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In most European countries evaluation of legal scholarship relies on both editorial and independent/external peer review. This co-existence reflects the lack of a general agreement about quality indicators and the lack of a lingua franca that would expand the audience and scrutiny beyond national borders ( Van Gestel and Lienhard, 2019 , 428). In fact, the legal community is not always enthusiastic about external peer review, and some law journals prefer review undertaken by members of the editorial staff.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Recent years have shown a clear trend towards independent peer review as a relevant quality indicator, like in Swiss and Dutch law journals ( Van Gestel et al, 2018 ). Still, how this should work in practice and what quality indicators should referees apply remains open ( Van Gestel and Lienhard, 2019 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Legal scholars agree on the benefits of peer review and consider it the least controversial method of evaluating the quality of scholarly publications (van Gestel and Vranken, 2011, 902). Recent years have shown a clear trend towards independent peer review as a relevant quality indicator, like in Swiss and Dutch law journals ( Van Gestel et al, 2018) Van Gestel and Lienhard, 2019).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Peer Review in Law Journals

Stojanovski

Casado

Agnoloni

et al. 2021

Front. Res. Metr. Anal.

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The field of law has retained its distinctiveness regarding peer review to this day, and reviews are often conducted without following standardized rules and principles. External and independent evaluation of submissions has recently become adopted by European law journals, and peer review procedures are still poorly defined, investigated, and attuned to the legal science publishing landscape. The aim of our study was to gain a better insight into current editorial policies on peer review in law journals by exploring editorial documents (instructions, guidelines, policies) issued by 119 Croatian, Italian, and Spanish law journals. We relied on automatic content analysis of 135 publicly available documents collected from the journal websites to analyze the basic features of the peer review processes, manuscript evaluation criteria, and related ethical issues using WordStat8. Differences in covered topics between the countries were compared using the chi-square test. Our findings reveal that most law journals have adopted a traditional approach, in which the editorial board manages mostly anonymized peer review (104, 77%) engaging independent/external reviewers (65, 48%). Submissions are evaluated according to their originality and relevance (113, 84%), quality of writing and presentation (94, 70%), comprehensiveness of literature references (93, 69%), and adequacy of methods (57, 42%). The main ethical issues related to peer review addressed by these journals are reviewer’s competing interests (42, 31%), plagiarism (35, 26%), and biases (30, 22%). We observed statistically significant differences between countries in mentioning key concepts such as “Peer review ethics”, “Reviewer”, “Transparency of identities”, “Publication type”, and “Research misconduct”. Spanish journals favor reviewers’ “Independence” and “Competence” and “Anonymized” peer review process. Also, some manuscript types popular in one country are rarely mentioned in other countries. Even though peer review is equally conventional in all three countries, high transparency in Croatian law journals, respect for research integrity in Spanish ones, and diversity and inclusion in Italian are promising indicators of future development.

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Courts, Law, Language and Culture

Tamm

2021

Ius Gentium: Comparative Perspectives on Law and Justice

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This article deals with some questions of legal language in the Nordic countries. It stresses the fact that, while there is no common legal language among these countries, there is still a strong common understanding even though each language (i.e., Danish, Norwegian and Swedish; Finnish is a different language) has also developed its own terminology. Nordic legal language has its roots in the first written form of the law in the years before and after 1200. Later, legal language was influenced by the German language, and, to some degree, more recently by English. The language of Nordic courts was always the vernacular. At the university, Latin was used until the eighteenth century (in dissertations still in the first part of the nineteenth century), but today studies of law are carried out in Nordic languages. There remains a great need for scholarly works on Nordic law in Nordic languages at a time when the balance between international orientation and the necessity of producing scholarly works in the national language is an issue to be discussed.

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Evaluating Academic Legal Research in Europe

Cited by 8 publications

References 0 publications

National research evaluation systems and the social sciences

National research evaluation systems and the social sciences

Peer Review in Law Journals

Courts, Law, Language and Culture

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